America, divided and tormented, is bending under its excesses, its democracy on the verge of the abyss… Between misleading utopias and fallen dreams, many crime writers have nevertheless never stopped, according to their introspective pen, denouncing the fractures and demons of their nation.
David Joy, who we talked about in Options of October 2020, is one of these accusing voices. The five novels he wrote are set in Jackson County, in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, where he has lived since the age of 18. He made this land of little people a sounding board for the unhappiness that is eating away at his entire homeland. And, book after book, as a whistleblower imbued with humanist convictions, he set out to point out the evils which are devitalizing his territory: withdrawal into oneself, a life made of expedients and violence, conspiracy… With The Two Faces of the Worldhe attacks white supremacism which, for him, is “the tree, which has the deepest roots in this country”…
Paint attack on Confederate statue
Toya Gardner comes to recharge his batteries – perhaps also to confront his atavism – in his small hometown, Sylva, with his grandmother Vess. Woman, black, intelligent, committed artist. The cup is quickly full in this North Carolina community, where virility and nostalgia for the slave South are elevated to a cult. Toya's provocative actions, such as painting red the statue of a local hero of the Civil War, will attract the wrath of a part of the population, with a warlike susceptibility…
At the same time, a foreigner from Mississippi is arrested, drunk, behind the wheel of his car. Inside it, we find Ku Klux Klan accoutrements, and a luxurious address book of members of the secret organization. All local notables… We are doing our best to cover up the affair. A succession of violent deaths decides otherwise. And Toya finds himself at the heart of the tensions and tragedies that are igniting the county…
A microsociety sick of its silences
The plot is twisted, but David Joy takes the time to multiply the points of view, to linger on people and places. He thus draws, in fine and precise writing, the outline of the traumas and heartbreaks of a microsociety sick of its silences, its secrets, its lies… And if the worst racism was not the most spectacular, that hysterics waving the Confederate flag in their regalia? What if the real evil, infinitely more insidious, haunted every corner of the streets of Sylva beneath the respectable exterior of this or that citizen, crippled by unacknowledged prejudices?
What if segregation flourished under the patronage of a coterie of whites imbued with their power and privileges, to preserve their interests? The divide, therefore, transcends skin color. And the gap, carefully dug, becomes a barrier between the rich and the poor…
Between a dark novel and a social chronicle, David Joy has created a dizzying work, a startling observation of white “superiority”, as it has become institutionalized and trivialized thanks to a social and economic system governed by injustice and inequalities. America in all its states… Of rare psychological violence, the plea is desperate. But tenderness, and sometimes even poetry emerge. Like Grandma Vess's, with her gaze saturated with the suffering endured, with the hope anchored in the soul by the voice of Nina Simone…
Titus advances with his head held high
Shawn A. Cosby, another rising star of American crime fiction, also digs up the roots of the tree. In Blood of the Innocents – with a preface by… David Joy! –, the neighboring state of Virginia replaces North Carolina. The bad wind is also blowing very strongly, waving Confederate banners in the back of the pickups.
Titus Crown is sheriff in Charon County. The first black sheriff is no small thing. Not easy either. His election arouses the ire of whites, who criticize the improper wearing of uniforms, and the suspicion of blacks, who accuse him of treason. Titus walks forward with his head held high. His father radiates such beautiful pride, and he has so many inner demons to overcome. The price to pay will come from a shooting at a high school and the death of a teacher…
Inspired by the George Floyd affair
The title doesn't lie: blood is shed, for the wrong purpose. SA Colby, a sensitive and bitter portraitist, says he was inspired by the George Floyd affair. The visual narration boosts a sharp story. We become one with the endearing Titus. His doubts become ours, we share his anger. And the carefully arranged adventures do not overshadow the implacable description of a society on the verge of rupture…
We are in 2017, year one of the Trump era, the first of the name. More uninhibited than ever, nostalgia for the South of yesteryear feasts on racial intolerance and religious fanaticism on a “soil soaked with several generations of tears”.
- David Joy, The Two Faces of the World, Sonatine, 2024, 432 pages, 23 euros.
- S.A. Cosby, The Blood of the Innocents, Sonatine, 2024, 456 pages, 23 euros.
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